Now that she was about to leave for Odessa, there was nothing to distract her from her worries. She still hadn’t received word from Hershel and didn’t know where he was or how to find him. She had his sister’s address and would start there, but she worried that his sister had moved or didn’t know where he was or, worse, that it was the unthinkable. The thought that something had happened to him rarely left her mind. It gnawed at her during the day, and at night it robbed her of sleep. Now, on the eve of her departure, she steeled herself against these thoughts. She had to keep going. She had to find him.
She walked in the park along the bluffs for the last time. She passed the merry-go-round that was shuttered and dark and the Merchant’s Club where the brass band used to play in the flower garden before they were sent off to the front. The park was deserted of course. The ice cream girls in their white aprons and blond hair were gone, as was the man with the monkey who begged for coins. The kvass sellers were gone and so was the old lady who sold hats and Russian flags: They were all gone. Soon she would be too.
She crossed the street, her feet creaking on the snow, and walked down to Svetlanskaya. There she passed the Niklolaev Iron Works factory, a brooding hulk with grimy windows and smokestacks jutting up into the sky. On the other side of the street were the neglected apartment buildings that housed the workers, cold water flats without heat or gas, surrounded by empty lots full of trash and horse manure.
She jumped when the whistle blew and a minute later two guards in company uniforms pushed opened the great iron gates. Soon a crowd of women poured out of the factory floor dressed in heavy coats, woolen hats, stockings, and boots. Berta wasn’t surprised to see that all the workers were women. She knew that the men had all gone to the front and many were now in their graves. In the past three months these women had taken their places, making cannons instead of farm machinery. They stared at her as they passed. They looked her up and down with envy etched in every line of their work-worn faces. They took in her furs, her gloves, and her expensive boots, whispering and giggling to each other, even once or twice jostling her on purpose. They were menacing enough to make her want to turn up the first side street.
Back on Davidkovo Street, she passed shops she used to frequent that were now shuttered for lack of goods. Here and there were burned-out buildings, blackened timbers littered with broken glass and twisted iron. These were once German shops. The war was going badly and Russia had suffered terrifying defeats. A whole army was lost at Tannenberg; army corps turned into divisions, brigades into regiments. There were hundreds of thousands if not a million Russians dead on the battlefields only three months into the war. Hatred of the Germans was running high. Everyone with a German name was suspected of being a spy; even the empress, who was German, was suspected of treachery.
The war had changed so much in Cherkast. Supply trucks parked in the streets were waiting to go to the front. Curtains were drawn over many of the windows, garbage left to rot on the stoops, a sure sign that a son or husband had just been lost. The air was acrid with the smell of smoke—not the smoke of factories, but of burning fields. Berta told herself that it was only the muzhiki burning what was left of the summer wheat, but it made her nervous all the same. She thought she could smell burning villages. She imagined the war was coming closer, even though she knew it was still hundreds of versts away.
It was growing dark and because the motor had been sold she had to walk home. There weren’t many cabs left because most of the motorcars had been requisitioned and the horses too, so the trolleys weren’t running either. Before trekking up the hill she decided to warm up with a cup of coffee. Fortunately the English Room was still open, so she stopped in there. The lunch trade was over and since no one had the time or money for a formal tea, the place was empty. The waiters in starched white aprons sat in the back eating their lunch at a long table and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. They looked over at her when she came in, but no one made an effort to greet her. Eventually a heavyset waiter with a round, oily face sighed deeply and got to his feet. He sauntered over with a look of indifference.
“Good afternoon, Madame,” he said patiently, taking her coat and hat.
“Just coffee, please,” she said, following him over to a table by the window. It was covered in a white tablecloth and decorated with a red carnation. Overhead was a clumsy painting of Red Square and another of the czar and his family. She sat down and put her things on the empty seat beside her and looked out the window at the street traffic. There was a group of soldiers, deserters most likely, standing on the corner in front of the restaurant, selling cigarettes and sunflower seeds.
“So I say to him, it is not my war, it ’s his war. Let him fight it,” grumbled a waiter from the back table.
“That is what I say,” echoed his colleague.
“Why should I go?” said another. “I do not even know this kaiser. Why do I have to go and die in a trench because the czar does not like his cousin?” These were all the older men who hadn’t been called in the first wave but would certainly be called now that Russia had suffered such heavy losses.
“Did I tell you about old lady Demianova?” said the first. “The one who lost three sons? She went crazy after that and now she wanders around the village looking for them. I nearly jumped out of my skin one night when I looked out the window and found her looking back at me with those crazy eyes. My mother says they ought to take her away and lock her up, but I think she’s suffered enough. ‘Let the old lady be,’ I told my mother. Anyway, she will freeze to death by winter’s end. You can be sure of that.”
Her waiter brought over a silver pot of coffee, poured a cup, and set it down in front of her. She was about to thank him when the door opened and a frigid blast of cold air came in along with two officers dressed in greatcoats and lambskin hats. One of them had a paper under his arm, the other a small bundle. Both of them noticed Berta right off but were too polite to stare at a pretty woman sitting alone.
“We’ll have a table,” said the first one, smoothing his carefully trimmed beard. Like so many others he looked like the czar. He gave his coat and hat to the waiter.
“And two brandies,” said the other, adding his things to the pile. The waiter handed their things to the girl at the hat check counter and showed them to a nearby table.
“They’re not all like that, you know,” said the shorter of the two, taking his seat. “I had a lieutenant in my unit once and he was downright decent. A good man and I trusted him. We all did.” He crossed one leg over the other and Berta noticed that his boots had been outfitted with heels to make him appear taller.
“That’s just like you. You’re such a child. You’d trust anyone,” said the other.
“I’m telling you he was honorable.”
“How would you know?”
“I know, that’s all.”
“And suppose you’re right. That makes one. One good Jew out of how many, five million?”
“I don’t know about the others and neither do you. You accuse me of being gullible and yet you seriously believe they cut the phone lines and reconnect them to the Austrians.”
“Why not?”
“Impossible, for one thing. Do you know anything about telephone lines? Baba’s yarn. Old crones making up stories to stir up trouble.”